Thursday, February 12, 2015

"The Sergeant Has Halted."

On September 10, 1862, Colonel James Clay Rice (44th
New York Infantry) walked into a hospital in Washington, D.C. (He never
specified which one, but probably it was either Armory Square Hospital or
Finlay Hospital.) As Rice later explained, “It was perhaps ten days after the second
battle of Manassas, that I visited one of the hospitals near Washington, for
the purpose of ascertaining if any of the disabled of my own command had been
borne there, and if so, of speaking to them a kind, cheerful word, always so
grateful to a wounded soldier.”

While passing through one of the wards, two strangers—a
sister and an aunt of a wounded man–accosted Rice, asking him if he
would stand by the couch of their relative while a surgeon amputated his limb. Rice
recalled, “They were both weeping, but the wounded soldier, although suffering
intensely, met me with a smile and saluted me. I sat down by his couch, and
took his hand in mine.”

Rice never mentioned the name of the soldier, but
details from his account render it certain that he met twenty-five-year-old Sergeant
William B. Hogeboom (Company K, 5th New York Infantry). Hogeboom’s
regiment, the 5th New York Zouaves, had been decimated at Second
Manassas, losing 297 officers and men. By mid-September, the hospitals in
Washington were choked with wounded Zouaves.

Sergeant Hogeboom was in rough shape. He had received a
gunshot wound on Saturday, August 30, but had not been removed from the field
until Wednesday, September 4. That day, a surgeon dressed his wound and put him
on an ambulance to Washington. The next day, Hogeboom endured his first surgery, the
physicians deciding it necessary to amputate the damaged limb. When Rice encountered him, it
was five days later, and the arteries had commenced to slough away. The
surgeons decided that a second amputation was needed.

Hogeboom regaled Rice
with the tale of his survival on the field of Second Manassas. He said:

[I] remained where . . . [I] fell . . . , with no food save a
few hard crackers left in my haversack; and no water, except that which God
gave me from heaven in rain and dew, and which I caught in my blanket. . . . You know, Colonel, how God remembers us
wounded soldiers with rain, after the battle is over, and when our lips are
parched and our tongues are burning with fever.

At this point, Hogeboom paused in telling his story, and
Rice “noticed that his voice was weaker and his face more pale and deathlike.”
Looking to the floor, Rice observed blood trickling down from the rubber poncho
on which the sergeant was lying. Clearly, the wound had hemorrhaged. He called
a surgeon to the bedside. After a short examination, consulting with other
surgeons in attendance, the chief physician told Rice that re-amputation would be useless, saying
that, in all probability, Hogeboom would not survive the hour. Rice explained
the situation to Hogeboom’s aunt and sister. He remembered, “Tears filled their
eyes, and they sobbed bitterly; but their grief was borne as Christian women
alone can bear such sorrow. . . . The sister, wiping away her tears, and taking
a prayer book from her dress, asked me if I would tell her brother how soon he
must die, and if I would read him ‘the prayer for the dying’.”

Rice attempted to
talk to the sergeant one last time, but he found it difficult. Hogeboom had
grown delirious and seemed to think that he was still on the march. To
communicate, Rice pretended to issue orders to the dying sergeant. Rice
related:

I went to the couch, and stood beside the dying soldier.
“Sergeant” I said, “we shall halt soon—we are not going to march much further
today.”

“Are we going to halt,
colonel,” said the sergeant, “so early in the day? Are we going to bivouac
before night?”

“Yes sergeant,” I
replied, “the march is nearly over—the bugle call will soon sound the ‘halt’.”

The sergeant’s mind
wandered for a moment but my tears interpreted to him my words.

“Oh! colonel,” he
said, “do you mean that I am so soon to die?”

“Yes, sergeant,” I
said, “you are soon to die.”

“Well, colonel, I am
glad I am going to die—I want to rest—the march has been so long that I am
weary—I am tired—I want to halt—I want to be with Christ—I want to be with my
Saviour.”

Rice recited the prayer, and then Hogeboom began saying his
goodbyes. He took off a ring, kissed it, telling his sister that he must give
it to their mother. He said, “Tell my mother, sister, that this is for her, and
that I remembered her and loved her, dying.” Then, taking a second ring from
his hand, he kissed it, and said, “Sister, give this to her to whom my heart is
pledged, and tell her—tell her to come to me in heaven.” Finally, addressing
Rice, Sergeant Hogeboom said, “And colonel, tell my comrades of the arm—the
brave army of the Potomac—that I died bravely, died for the good old flag.”

According to Rice, “These were the last words of the dying
soldier. His pulse now beat feebler and feebler, the blood tickled faster and
faster down the bed-side, the dew of death came and went, and flickering for a
moment over the pallid face, at length rested—rested forever. The sergeant has
halted. His soul is now in heaven.”

Of course, we historians must be a bit skeptical of Rice’s account. He
was a religious man and deeply dedicated to his country, so his version of what
Hogeboom said in his final moments might not have been word-for-word the truth, but what
Rice preferred to hear. However, we have no reason to doubt that this incident
occurred. Rice watched a wounded soldier die, that much is certain. I have every
reason to believe that Rice remembered this moment for the rest of his life.
When he died from a serious gunshot wound two years later—the subject of my next blog
post—he met his end the same way as Hogeboom, on the floor of a field hospital,
comforted by a superior.

It must rip out a piece of a soldier’s soul to watch a
fellow soldier die. But sometimes, watching a brave man die can provide a lifetime
of emotional fortitude.

Sergeant Hogeboom was laid to rest at Grove Street Cemetery, New
Haven, Connecticut.

Colonel James Clay Rice, shown as commander, 44th New York Volunteers.